The Forgiveness of Sins

Ow can it be true that through Jesus Christ is preached the forgiveness of sins, when as a matter of fact the forgiveness of sinsisan Old Testament doctrine? If nothing had been known about forgiveness until the appearance of Jesus Christ, He would have been justly entitled to identify His name with the doctrine; but seeing that it is historieally later than His birth, how is it that the act of forgiveness is now inseparably associated with His priesthood? The solution of the apparent difficulty turns wholly upon the right principle of interpretation, which I conceive to be that the Old Testament — Jewish or Pagan — written or unwritten — is as full of Christ as the New; that, in fact, the Old Testament is an anonymous book until Christ attaches His signature to it. “Search the Scriptures, for they are they that testify of Me.” In my opinion we not only lose nothing, we gain much by tracing the best elements and aspirations of every paganism to a Divine source, and treating them as an Old Testament full of types and shadows, yearnings and symbols, which find their meaning and their abrogation in the truth and love of Jesus Christ. Hence the wise missionary (Paul at Athens, for example) has ever found it best fully to acknowledge all that is good in heathenism and to carry it forward to its highest meaning. The application of this

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principle to the Old Testament of Judaism puts an end to the historical difficulty respecting the forgiveness of sins, by showing that what was once anonymous has been at length identified as the anticipatory action of Christ, — the more clearly so, because nowhere in the New Testament is the basis of forgiveness changed; it is still, as ever, a basis of mediation, sacrifice, priesthood.

But there is another difficulty less easy of solution by the mere intellect, the difficulty that the sinner should be forgiven for the sake of Christ and not for his own sake. It is clearly for Christ’s sake that sin is forgiven; thus: “Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”’! This difficulty has expressed itself in various sophisms, some of them obviously puerile, some of them disingenuous, but most of them likely to arrest and captivate the popular mind. For example: If sin is a debt, why should Christ have paid it? If Christ has paid it, why should men be called upon, in suffering and sorrow here, and in perdition hereafter, to pay it over again? How could Christ’s cross pay debts that were not contracted, that is to say, pay in advance the debts of men who were not born and who would not be born until many centuries after the transaction? Puerile and uncandid as these questions, and the group to which they belong, undoubtedly are, perhaps they only imperfectly express the agony of many honest minds in wrestling with this stupendous difficulty of forgiveness for the sake of another. In offering some suggestions upon this difficulty, let us, if possible, lay hold of some principles that will carry ‘with them all outposts and casualties, otherwise we shall be fretted by merely formal variations of one and the same difficulty. Let the question stand thus: Why should a man be divinely forgiven not for his own sake but for Christ’s? And let that inquiry support itself by the

. Eph. iv. 32,

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farther question, If one man can forgive another without the intervention of a third party, why cannot the Almighty do the same thing as between Himself and the sinner?

These questions, simple as they seem, touch nearly every point of the whole argument of this book; it might be permitted for that reason to refer the inquirer to all that has gone before, but we will summarise for him that he may the more easily come to a right conclusion. First of all, he must say distinctly where he learned that word “forgive,” which he now uses without apparently suspecting his claim to it. He evidently thinks that he coined the word, that he fixed its proper meaning and scope, and that therefore it is his own property. This is exactly what is utterly denied. We hold, as Christian teachers, that forgweness is an idea which never occurred to the uninspired mind; that it is a revelation; and that to the man who exercises it may be said, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but the Father who is in heaven.”

. Even if it could be shown that men who never heard of Christ forgave one another, we should require to know precisely what they meant by forgiveness: was it a compromise? was it a purchase? was it a snare? was it a fear? possibly if we knew the exact answer, it might be found that the so-called forgiveness was itself an offence against morals, and needed itself to be forgiven, Where, then, did the inquirer learn the word “forgiveness,’ and now that he has learned it, does he know its vital and complete meaning? That resentment is natural or spontaneous is known to every man; but that forgiveness is natural has never yet been proved: something else has, however, been proved which makes this argument invincible, and that is, that to forgive from the heart has never been done even by the best men without the influence of the most forcible considerations that can move the human will.

ai The Priesthood of Christ

Resentment comes easily; forgiveness has to be explained, inculcated, and commended by the most pathetic reasons. In a sense easily apprehended forgiveness is unnatural, that is to say, it does not spontaneously occur to the mind, and even when it is suggested it is instantly encountered by aresentment which the sufferer vindicates as reasonable and just. You may see, then, that even as between man and man when forgiveness is really exercised it may explain itself by the very words “for the sake of isis and the offended man may be entitled to say, “This offence ought to be punished; it is cruel; it is horrible; and justice itself demands vengeance; but,’ and then may be added reasons which if not immoral must be sublime with the sublimity of the gospel itself. Was there not a creditor who having two debtors who had nothing to pay frankly forgave them both? There was, but where? In the conception of Christ, and yet the fact has been feioniously appropriated as quite a common human idea! Thus men do steal the stars, and show them as fires of their own kindling.

Having thus demanded of the inquirer where he learned the word “forgiveness,” we must in the next place call upon him for a distinct explanation of its meaning. Is it something done wm himself, or merely something done /or another? Does it arise from moral indifference, a temper so easy as to let moral distinctions pass without criticism? Is it an act affected by time, as, for example, by decline of mere memory, the resentment being determined by the vividness or incertitude of the recollection? Does he make forgiveness turn in any sense or degree upon mere time, saying, “It is yet too soon to forgive; I may forgive in a year or two, but not now that the wound is so new”? If so, it may not be magnanimity that is rising, it may only be recollection that is fading. But with God there is no change of memory; there is no succession called time;

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He lives in a perpetual present; if He forgives, He forgives when the wound is new; He receives no alleviation from the lapse of days; whilst the dagger is yet in the wound He proclaims the conditions and opportunities of pardon. Not only so, when we have forgiven our enemies they have still to be forgiven by God; this must be so, if we consider that we can do no more than forgive offences or crimes (and even these under limited conditions), we cannot enter the inner region of spiritual transgression. We forgive the blow, we cannot forgive the motive which dealt it; as between two men the offence and the release may have been completed, but there remains a farther settlement in which the offended party may have no voice: that settlement may be social; as, for example, in the case of felony, the man who has been robbed may forgive the thief, but society takes the case from individual judgment and determines it by an impartial and general law: and even society can only kill the body, and after that it has no more that it can do; the offender has still to answer the law of which other laws were but broken and ill-assorted parts. So, In view of these considerations, it would appear that forgiveness is not the easy, simple, superficial act that long familiarity with its name would seem to suggest. Itisan agony. It is across. It is a shedding of blood!

If the inquirer has been proceeding upon the idea that forgiveness is merely a courteous answer to a personal apology, there need be no wonder as to his embarrassment on reading an account of what is required to secure the Divine pardon of human sin. But it is his conception or definition that is at fault, and not the New Testament law. It would indeed be only modest on the part of the inquirer to say, that seeing God requires such and such conditions before He can pardon the sinner, it is evident that the whole question of sin is larger than man is able fully to comprehend, having relationships and effects which transcend the circle of human intelligence. But if the inquirer is yet unprepared for this admission, we must bind him to a severe scrutiny of the things which he does suppose himself to know. Unfortunately he already knows the word “forgive,” and it is hard for him to believe that it is one of the words which have been revealed — plucked for him from the tree of lfe — but in the face of this misfortune we must ply him with this question: Why should there be such an act as the forgiveness of offence as between man and man, and of sin as between God and man? Take the former branch of the inquiry first. Why should man forgive man? Will you thereby gain the man? But is any man worth gaining who can offend, annoy, and injure another? If you say, first punish the man and then forgive him; you must remember that if the punishment is just he has by the very fact of its endurance so far paid off his obligation; if the punishment was not sufficient to cover the whole ground of the offence, that is your blame not his, for you yourself, without any interference on his part, fixed the measure of the punishment; and finally, if by the endurance of punishment a man can honourably though painfully discharge his obligations, why should you torment him with a needless charity (a form, indeed, of malignity), for whose exercise you may be tempted to glorify yourself, when the man was able and willing to meet you upon independent terms? If he did so meet you there would be no act of forgiveness, it would be simply the case of a man paying his debts to the uttermost farthing, But there is another question deeper still, which the inquirer is bound to consider: Is it possible for forgiveness to be a one-sided act? This is in answer to the suggestion that God should forgive the sinner without terms and without mediation. If it turn out that the most magnanimous man cannot by er,

any act of his own complete all that is meant by forgiveness, that fact may change the scope of the whole argument. He may have the disposition to forgive; he may declare his willingness to forgive; he may go so far as actually to say that he has forgiven; and yet nothing farther than a one-sided act has taken place. There must be a corresponding movement on the other side, or nothing effectual can be done. And this is exactly what God requires. He proclaims Himself a God delighting in forgiveness and mercy, but beyond that He cannot go; but if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness; the penitent thief He will save; the impenitent thief damns himself. Ifa man sins against you and expresses sorrow, you can forgive and restore the offender; but if he deny his offence, or glory in it, any forgiveness you may exercise can be one-sided only, and may even tend towards self-demoralisation and social disorder. Thus God represents Himself as jealous, severe, by no means pardoning the guilty or allowing the sinner to go free; and this rigour is the security and defence of the universe. Even God, then, cannot forgive without confession on the part of man; and whether a sinner can confess without Christ is a question which the inquirer should deeply consider.

Let us include that question in one still larger: Is forgiveness possible? If by forgiveness we are to understand that a thing once done can be wndone, then we are confronted with something like a miracle, and we are entitled to ask, Is it possible? Let us grant that a thing done may be treated as if it had never been done; that it may be relegated to oblivion and silence by a determination of the will on both sides; but something more than this is meant by forgiveness, or if it mean this only, we may well say of the Atonement, why was this waste made?

The Christian idea of forgiveness includes cleansing, purification, justification, the utter destruction of the sin or sins to which it is extended, it means birth, sonship, inheritance. “How can these things be?” We nowhere find the solution of a miracle in the miracle itself; we look beyond, we look above: so we must do in this case; intellectually, as we understand the term, this thing, viz., the obliteration of moral history, is «mpossible; but in many things we have to take our idea of possibility not from ourselves but from God, saying, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” So we return to the point from which there is no escape, the doctrine that all vital truth is revealed to the mind of man, and consequently that we walk by faith and not by sight.

Now as to the difficulty supposed to inhere in the words “for Christ’s sake.” If man can forgive man, why cannot God forgive the sinner, without the intervention of a third person? But it has already been pointed out that man cannot forgive man in the sense implied in the objection, and therefore the inquiry based upon it loses its application and point. Man can forgive offences, he cannot forgive the sin which they represent; herein the old inquiry is for ever pertinent, Who can forgive sins but God only? But it is not enough to destroy the validity of the objection; we must, if possible, get at the positive truth, and I believe you will find it in the direction of the suggestion, perhaps in the suggestion itself, that there is no forgiveness even between man and man except in Christ or for Christ’s sake; overlooking, there may be, and palliation, and acceptance of apologies, but it can only be in Christ that deep, true, cordial, everlasting forgiveness can transpire between man and man. It is far from certain, however, that the name of Christ may be present in the consciousness of the man who exercises this forgiveness; he may not be able to give a name or a definition to the

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motive by which he is impelled; and yet not the less certainly may he be acting in the Christly spirit. We do not always know what we do or why we do it, but Christ Himself will surprise us with unexpected and gracious interpretations when He “comes in His glory.” The righteous will be told to their amazement that they have ministered to Christ in ministering to the least of His brethren; and to them also will be revealed the fact that in making their most strenuous advances in the direction of cordial and absolute forgiveness, they were moving in His strength and more or less unconsciously accepting and honouring His inspiration. So true is it that our consciousness has actually to be interpreted to itself, and that Christ will reveal His presence and power in the least suspected circumstances. Now in so far as the doctrine is true that the exercise of forgiveness, whether between man and man, or God and the sinner, is really and necessarily, however imperfectly recognised in the former case, something done for the sake of Christ, it would seem to follow that the basis of true forgiveness is not a matter for metaphysical investigation and debate, but is revealed to us, and therefore is ours not as a mere spoil won by force of intellect, but a holy and gracious truth which we hold in childlike and thankful faith. This is the only satisfactory answer we can return to the difficulty supposed to be found in the necessary presence of Christ in the act of forgiveness as between God and the sinner; an answer which may be thus summed up: (1) Forgiveness is not the easy and simple act which it is supposed to be; (2) analogies founded upon human forgivenesses are incomplete, because they can relate only to offences and not to spiritual corruption; (3) forgiveness itself is not the spontaneous outgrowth of human feeling, it comes from Divine inspiration; (4) human forgiveness, in the sense in which it approaches Divine pardon, is really, though perhaps ‘unconsciously, done in Christ’s name or for Christ’s sake; and (5) forgiveness is not a question within the province of intellectual speculation; it is revealed to us as a possibility; the conditions upon which its possibility is founded are also revealed to us; and those conditions are, primarily, the priesthood of Christ, and secondarily, the penitent and utterly unreserved confession of sin by the transgressor.